Chansey is actually one of, if not, the best stall card in the game (for the time anyways). 120 HP on a basic, and an attack that has a chance for the opponent to not do any damage. Not only that, but combining it with Alakazam's Damage Swap Pokemon Power can make Chansey last a crazy amount of time. It helps that with how lightning fast the game was at the time with how common draw power was, stalling until your opponent ran out of cards was actually a pretty viable strategy. Speaking of stall decks, there's a pretty goofy meme stall deck called "Mulligan Mewtwo" which just involves 2 Base set Mewtwos, and 58 Psychic energy cards...that's it. From there, just spam Barrier, and your opponent can't do much of anything, unless they knock out the Mewtwo before you're able to get 2 energies onto it. It wasn't a truly viable deck, since Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal are a thing, but it's just really funny, especially if you're able to somehow pull it off.
@@shadowtitanx3962 Which is funny, not only because other cards were buffed due to power creep, but because even if it had it's old 1 retreat cost, it'd still probably not be a viable card in that format.
You can also play Defender on Chansey to reduce to recoil damage done to Chansey by 20 for each Defender attached. Didn't realize until I wrote it out that all 80 damage can be negated by attaching the maximum number of Defenders that you can fit in a deck (4*20)=80 damage reduced.
Lass used to be an important competitive card, simply because it was basically the only opponent hand disruption in the game. Impostor oak would usually help your opponent in most situations, so if you wanted to hurt your opponents hand, Lass was your only real option.
This gave me an idea for a GB TCG challenge - only use moves that deal 10 damage. The trick would be figuring out which secondary effects are the most useful!
I kinda went through this idea at one point, but there are so many options. I also had the idea to only use Pokémon under level 10 on the cards. Kinda similar.
Oh boy. An hour long? you really spoiled us with this one, didn't ya'? thanks for your hard work - I enjoy your unique, long, and entertaining content. Don't stop the way you work. Have a great day/week!
@@corralzin4909 Unfortunately that says more about it being a luck based strategy than it being actually good. I will admit it is one of the better gambles you can take in the base set for damage output to energy input ratio.
I appreciate any card that can win the game in one turn. You go first: energy, flip, 30 damage on a Rattata or Magikarp, opponent has no bench. Game over.
Would love some videos on the E-Reader sets. Skyridge, Aquapolis and Expedition are amongst my favourite sets ever. Such beautiful cards from amazing Pokémon
@@SamStarbuckerI just paid a whole pack of cards for a car payment. Funny how those things equal out sometimes. Yin and yang. Hot and cold. You're yes and you're no. Anyways namaste.
I’m getting back into Pokémon cards after years of collecting but never playing them. I’m finally starting to play the actual card game instead of just collecting them to throw in a binder and look at them like I did when I was younger. So happy I found this channel.
The reason Zapdos is the only legendary bird in the base set is because it was designed (mostly) around pokemon kids would would see the first half of red/blue. Zapdos was usually the first bird people would get because of the difficulty of the seafoam island articuno puzzle and moltres was endgame.
Moltres was definitely the first legendary I encountered. It's right there on Victory Road. I didn't even realize the power plant existed my first game. I did try the Seafoam Islands the first time, but got lost and decided to journey back to Pallet Town and surf south instead (I totally missed fly my first time playing, too).
This sounds like something made up because it “sounds good” but doesn’t have any evidence supporting it. I couldn’t find a quote from the creators saying anything like this
My dad drove me an hour from our house to a different STATE just so I could get the Overgrowth deck. No store in my hometown had any cards in stock for so long.
Although you said you dont plan on going past Skyridge, I'd love to see you delve into the further generations such as the "ex Era," the "Diamond & Pearl/Platinum Era,"and the "HeartGold SoulSilver Era." The artworks for these slightly later sets (such as HGSS with the stunning multi-card "Legend" cards) along with how much of a reputation some of these cards have held over the years (such as gold stars and such) make them a good topic to talk about and something that IMO should not go unnoticed by retrospective channels like yours. I'll say that this comes from a bit of a bias as I work at a card shop and pretty much the only things we ever buy from people (because it is the only thing people ever bring in to sell to us) are either cards from the Base set - Team Rocket era or modern cards from the past 5 or so most recent sets (These cards also being the main topic on the internet lately). So it'd be very nice and refreshing to hear someone's take on them who has a big bias for the WoTC era cards aswell as it would also be really cool to see you go over the evolution of the mechanics of the Pokemon TCG along with the design of the cards! Please take my suggestion into consideration and thank you for reading!
18:00 a little clarify, charizard needs to discard 2 energy cards instead of 2 energy which means if only 2 double colourless energy cards are attached to it when fire spin is used all 2 energy cards, i.e. 4 energy, have to be discarded
Thankfully the reprinted Base Charizard from the TCG Classic Collection coming out later this year finally changed that to say "Discard 2 Energy." Wether or not it should be legal for retro events is left for the community to decide I guess hahaha.
I've never played pokemon competitively but speaking from my experience playing mtg I'd say you undervalued pokedex and maintenance heavily. In my world, we would call pokedex scry 5 which would be insane. The closest I can think of is ponder which only does 3 cards and is still banned in almost every format for being too powerful. Maintenance is good because the ability to dump useless cards in your hand and replace them is powerful. It's similar to a card in mtg called faithless looting which just got banned in modern. Imo it's even better though because the cards go back in your deck.
Dude, this was an absolute treat! I feel like the Base Set doesn't get a full look outside the context of being alongside Jungle and Fossil. As a side thing, I think Clefairy being a foil rare with no Clefable in sight is a leftover artifact of Clefairy potentially having the marketable mascot spot instead of Pikachu. If you think about it, it is a little weird that the series mascot is a pretty basic common card
Best 2 pokemon cards from the base sets in my opinion were Dugtrio and Blastoise. Dugtrio was very easy to bring out and it did a good amount of damage very quickly along with its pre-evolution Diglett. Blastoise was essential in any water deck as its pokemon power rain dance made water decks an easy choice to use.
Cannot overstate how perfect this video was. I would love to see set breakdowns of the early sets, it's really really interesting to see the balance breakdown and everything. Masterpiece. Keep it up!
To note: Devolution Spray's two main functions in competitive was to 1. Coming into play pokepower/bodies (if there were any at that time) and 2. to take off an evolution card so you can evolve to a fresh one, even if your pokemon is knocked out during the process. It's to save your 2nd stages ect, in case you couldn't search it out. It's not bad but it's very specific in it's use case.
There were only pokepowers back then. Pokebodies only came some expansions later. Back then, pokepowers were not so common, since only a few cards had them.
I can’t stress enough just how much this kind of content is my jam. Hope this remains an ongoing series for a while! I’ve really loved your shorter content so longer form videos like these are especially nice.
I forgot the Electrode at 26:33 even existed because it's not included in the GBC game! Maybe the rainbow artwork was too hard to reduce to a palette of four colors for the GBC, but I'm guessing Buzzap was simply too much work for the programmers to want to bother coding in. 🤔
Many forget it existed for that very reason. Too bad, because i would take that one over that crappy GB exclusive version they made. Skipped using voltorb and electrode in GB games because it was just too crappy.
As someone who's been playing with the vintage theme decks lately, it's been nice hearing someone elses opinion on these cards. Thanks for the videos. I've been binging these set throwbacks.
lass was a killer, maybe more so after jungle, but you play all your oaks, bills, energy removals, etc. then you lass and the opponent doesn't get to use any of theirs
It’s still pretty situational. You’re playing other trainer cards to get more cards (Oak, Bill) so your chances are higher that you’re getting more trainers, causing you to wait on Lass even more. Also, Oak would cause you to discard your Lass, so you’d have to draw another. It’s good, but for it to really make an impact, everything needs to be right.
The Base Set, along with RBY and the anime, were the holy trinity of what got me into anime and video games. I can confidently say had I never got this set as a kid, I'd probably never have gotten into what I enjoy today.
Mr Paraspectre here acting like it’s Christmas gifting us a whole hour of content!?!? Absolute bliss. Love these analyses, and will look forward to the future sets. I too have a stronger connection with the older cards, compared to the newer sets. Up to the gen2, and the e-reader ones, I was an avid collector. But then switched to other games as I grew older… My first pack had Venusaur, and I remember pulling the Pokémon Center trainer card and being absolutely impressed by the CGI art of Keiji Kinebuchi. Still my favorite illustrator.
Thank you for covering this content! The original Base Set holds a very special place to so many out there. The 90's shounen aesthetic is just so different from the branding that Pokemon has nowadays... Look forward to you covering the other gen 1 expansions.
That was a nice watch. I never got big into the physical TCG on account of it being rather expensive, but I did get hooked on the digital version with the GBC game releasing on 3DS. In the couse of this video, I fired it up again and built the Haymaker deck mentioned in this video. I didn't know that was a thing, but it really is incredibly effective.
Your channel made me start using parasect in every pokemon games. Has access to spore and false swipe. Never bothered checking before! On another note, the japan exclusive 2nd pokemon TCG game is pretty good. Surprised to see there was a fan translation.
Childhood rocked with the Base Set and the state of the game seemed amazing when WOTC sets were out. Makes me wanna play the rom with PTCG. I started playing MTG after ending collecting Pokémon in EX Delta Species, few sets before the ugly powercreep.
52:30 Never understimate the power of a Turn 1 Lass. Did a retro match a couple of weeks back and getting Lass'd Turn 1 cost me the game since I had to shuffle back Trader and Computer Search hahaha.
Set analysis is a great topic to go into! Your channel recently inspired me to upload some Pokémon TCG GB challenge runs of my own, and doing those have made me think about distribution. Is Machop balanced against Hitmonchan because it evolves? How about being Common vs Rare--should the rarity of the card reflect power or be reflective of the evolutionary stage? I'm still at the start of the video, but you mention the relative balance of types in this set. When you get to Fossil and Jungle, you may notice a deluge of Grass types and an imbalance towards attacks that Poison compared to other status conditions. You mention Water is a common Gen 1 type, but Poison is not far behind, and even some Tangela cards inflict poison.
43:25 I've done some research like this, played the GBC TCG game, found old decklists and remixed my own, it would be neat to battle. I printed out all the original cards up through Gym Challenge, got some real energy cards to use as support and then sleeved them all, you can't tell they are proxys really. Do you have a link cable long enough to reach Missouri? haha
Man this is making wanna play the gbc tcg now aha. I only collected the cards and I'm a veteran in the main games, but I never actually played the tcg (or learned), but as you're going over these moves, I'm feeling nostalgia for these cards again and I wanna learn how to actually play with them. Great video!
I don't even play Pokemon TCG, I only play Yugioh but I love your content. It is so easy to understand even for someone with no idea of what's good or not in this game. I also find it funny how you mention powercreep in Pokemon because I honestly had no idea the game suffered from that as well (I am very used to it due to how ridiculous ygo's powercreep is). It's an interesting way to look at how card games change so much through the years.
All card games suffer from it sadly. I used to love yugioh but now I can't play the current formats. Same for pokemon, luckily there's a fanbase playing the older formats of the games (yugioh and pokémon tcg)
Great video! I'm currently trying to recollect the Base Set (and Jungle/Fossil) cards from my childhood and at the same time introducing my son to pokemon cards. This video was great at showing him what these cards were like back then vs. now. I hope you can get your Zard soon! I'm just missing the 3 starters and a few random non holos...
@Paraspectre we have a few decent shops... I'm at the point in my collection now where I'm having to look online for cards I'm missing. I've been to a few card shows too. Those are a lot of fun
I remember reading about a deck build that was purely a stall. No energy and all high hp Pokémon. Used the Pokémon center card to keep health and you used the imposter oak card when the opponent was low on cards in their hand to make them use more cards from their deck. It was weird but fun to use.
Ah yes the amazing Dewgong holding on high above the rest of the water uncommons. What a sick evolutionary line in the base set, that 60 HP on Seel is no joke either. I remember getting the Overgrowth deck, my sister got Brushfire as I remember she always had that Ninetales kicking around in our battles. I remember being a big fan of Staryu and Starmie in that structure deck, solid stuff and I liked them from the Gameboy game too especially because of Starmie's Star Freeze sound effects.
Really fun video! When I play the GBC TCG, I enjoy using a variant of Haymaker called Flamemaker. Swaps out Hitmonchan for Fossil Magmar. Much more consistent since there's no Fire resists. Magmar plays the game a _little_ slower than Hitmonchan, but both of its moves have status effects which are nice early in a match to help you get benched Scyther and Electabuzz set up.
3:03 actually now that I think about it, aren't most flying types also normal in the first generation? You also say that instead of the flying, they focused on the normal part, hence why they are colorless
Seeing this is fun! My parents and I used to go nuts with collecting the more classic WotC/2000s Nintendo cards, so it always makes me warm and fuzzy seeing coverage on the Base Set and past expansions. My white whale when it comes to the Pokémon TCG is, "What if all the types were supposed to stay like they are in the video games?" More complicated, yes. Janky sounding, very yes. But I think it would be a neat little alternate universe for the TCG!
Squirtle will always have a place in my heart for somehow paralyzing the opposing Pokemon like 11 times in a row and shutting down their deck that otherwise hardcountered mine. I really did figure out how to perfectly roll a die for just that one battle
Really fun trip down memory lane. If we are counting trainers I'd say the best card is Bill. Really no reason to ever run less than 4 copies. I'm curious why you'd say each deck should run at least 2 copies and not four?
I had a couple of different nonstandard decks for tournaments back in the day but one of my favorite niche decks was always my fire/colorless deck build around Charizard. Everyone always slept on it's pokemon power and pokemon breeder so you could get an unsuspecting charmander on the field with 2 fire energy and then surprise the opponent by dropping a pokemon breeder and colorless energy on it in the same turn to go from some wimpy basic to the absolute buster that was fire spin Charizard and keep utilizing colorless energies to only discard a single card per fire spin allowing you to use it back to back with lucky enough draws. The advantage of the rest of the deck being colorless is you could always stall for time with something like Chancey or use one of the no retreat colorless to quickly swap into charmander once the setup was complete.
By the way if you're curious the reason the best of game promos reverse Holo Hitmonchan had 60hp Instead of 70 was That one of the guys that Wizards absolutely hated Haymaker decks. And then either losing the license so they figured for a little while anyway they can print it wrong and tell people to play it as written
God I wonder if I can find it still. There's a very funny story about the shadowless cards. Apparently shortly before they were slated to release someone lost the files for the templates they were using and they only had a little bit to go off of because apparently Japan just wasn't getting back with them. So so they took what they had which were cropped versions of the cards which lacked text and they flipped him and rotated them and forgot to add the drop shadow. You look really closely on shadowless card you can tell that the background is repeating from the top. Worth noting that if a card is first edition it will also be shadowless aside from Machamp which I'm sure you'll touch on by the time you get to it. Effectively this makes the shadowless cards 2nd edition
Chansey was a tank mon you'd play to stall your opponent while you setup bench mons and use trainers to fish for evolutions and energies. It was also the best anti-psychic wall in the game. You never attack with it because it helps the opponent more than hurts them, or at best you'd occasionally use Scrunch to guard against high damage attacks or fighter counterplay.
Devolution spray is a better full heal for basic or stage 1 pokemon, since you can choose stage 2 and discard no cards in order to heal it of major status effects and minor status effects like poliwhirl's amnesia.
Iirc, I think Chancy is actually part of the best deck in the original format, but you not knowing that is entirely reasonable because unlike the main games, the TCG came out with new sets fast enough that the Meta couldn't settle like it did in the games. I did wanna mention it, though, since Chancy is just in general one of the strongest gen 1 pokemon in every version of gen 1, entirely by accident, and I think that's funny.
Scoop Up is the one card I think you were off base with. The fact that you can just play the basic 'mon that you just scooped up again basically means it's a free heal.
I didn't know how to play the card game when I was a kid. I recently started playing the Gameboy TCG games to learn. This video helped me put things into perspective (or should I say into paraspective). I've got some deck building to do in game now.
Y'know, i wish they'd just keep printing the Wizards of the Coast sets. There's literally no downside for anyone involved. Everyone wants them and it'd be printing money for WotC and Nintendo to do packs, theme decks, etc even at the same prices we bought them for back in the day without adjusting for inflation. (Well, everyone except for the losers trying to sell holo Charizards for $150 but nobody cares about those jerks anyways)
In the game boy version, I built a strangler deck around Poliwrath, Golduck, and Dragonair that could routinely remove energy faster than it could be played. Very fun build around if you aren't playing humans. Blastoise ended up utility as I rarely attacked with it
This is a nostalgia trip down memory lane for me. When I turned 5 (in 2004) my half sister had a HUGE collection of these. To this day, I’m still trying to 1 up her childhood collection 😅
Ah, the nostalgia! While I was never able to build a full collection when the first sets came out. Mainly due to the whole Pokémon is Satan thing going on. I do remember the collection I did have, and they were awesome to play with, when my older sis had the time. Learning about this stuff now, is really cool to see. After you posted your first challenge vid, I got that craving to play the old game, and collected what cards I lacked. Been playing against my Brother-in Law and my niece and Nephews. It's been a real blast. Thanks for making these videos dude! :3
When I was 8 before had a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had to go watch my sister play a game of tee ball. In order to placate me, my dad took me to a local baseball card store (D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue) and bought me two packs of Pokemon cards. In the second one was a holographic Charizard. That was the single greatest moment of my young life, and I'm pretty sure it's still up there in my top 5 almost 25 years later. I'm incredibly excited to get myself that Pokemon Legacy set or whatever they're calling it when they finally release it just for the pure and unadulterated nostalgia :D
I've been recently getting back into the modern TCG online and I think Blastoise here is a great example of how wildly the power level has changed from back in the day to now. Back then, Blastoise would've been the centerpiece of a water deck, with high health, a powerful ability, and an attack that can deal up to 60 damage. But now? 100 health won't save you from most basic attacks from current centerpiece Pokemon, and the thought of needing 5 total energy to deal 20 extra damage is so laughably bad that you'd lose a match before you could even get Blastoise to attack. The current go-to water deck with Chien-Pao can deal 300 damage by discarding 5 water energy, and they don't even all need to be on Chien-Pao! I know card games can't just tread water forever and it's been over 20 years since Pokemon TCG started, but dang, it's just always wild to see how different things get lmao EDIT: also, always appreciate some of that good Banjo music
...random idea to milk the TCG video game: maybe play through the game using one of the TCG decks? I'm sure you wouldn't mind playing through it using the Overgrow deck, yeah?
Loving your content man! Thanks for this and all your hard work. Will you be reviewing Fire Red & Leaf Green at some point? Would love to hear your thoughts.
You under value lass a lot. The early meta had people running lots of draw snd energy removal. Lass was considered strong because you could simply activate as many trainer cards as you desired, getting as much benefit as possible and then use lass, cutting your opponent off from any of their powerful trainer cards
I simply must ask you to talk about the delta series. It was probablt tye first set i got that wasnt a hand me down, though those cards were still greatly appreciated.
So the haymaker deck was mostly Electabuzz and Hitmonchan until Scyther came in the jungle set then everyone played all three but the original haymaker deck were just the two pokémon from base set
btw one strategy that i invented is to use alakazam alongside dodrio and mr mime in the same deck, with alakazams poke power you can intentionally swap all your damage counters onto dodrio to get a huge rage off, also its poke power works really well with mr mime which lets you retreat it for free if the matchup is bad/the enemy pokemon resists psychic (thats basically the only time the matchup will be bad) and either way as long as you have alakazam plus mr mime you will only take 20 damage at best each turn and it will survive for a very long time since you can just swap the damage counters arround to your dodrios in the back to power up rage and saving mr mime at the same time. these 3 have amazing synergy.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Chansey is actually one of, if not, the best stall card in the game (for the time anyways). 120 HP on a basic, and an attack that has a chance for the opponent to not do any damage. Not only that, but combining it with Alakazam's Damage Swap Pokemon Power can make Chansey last a crazy amount of time. It helps that with how lightning fast the game was at the time with how common draw power was, stalling until your opponent ran out of cards was actually a pretty viable strategy. Speaking of stall decks, there's a pretty goofy meme stall deck called "Mulligan Mewtwo" which just involves 2 Base set Mewtwos, and 58 Psychic energy cards...that's it. From there, just spam Barrier, and your opponent can't do much of anything, unless they knock out the Mewtwo before you're able to get 2 energies onto it. It wasn't a truly viable deck, since Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal are a thing, but it's just really funny, especially if you're able to somehow pull it off.
Also, Chansey has 1 Retreat Cost. In the XY Evolution set, it was nerfed to now have 3 Retreat Cost.
@@shadowtitanx3962 Which is funny, not only because other cards were buffed due to power creep, but because even if it had it's old 1 retreat cost, it'd still probably not be a viable card in that format.
You can also play Defender on Chansey to reduce to recoil damage done to Chansey by 20 for each Defender attached.
Didn't realize until I wrote it out that all 80 damage can be negated by attaching the maximum number of Defenders that you can fit in a deck (4*20)=80 damage reduced.
Lass used to be an important competitive card, simply because it was basically the only opponent hand disruption in the game. Impostor oak would usually help your opponent in most situations, so if you wanted to hurt your opponents hand, Lass was your only real option.
impostor would later find itself a new role as a milling card with fossil Moltres.
Imposter would also help in stall situations by quickly depleting your opponents deck
This gave me an idea for a GB TCG challenge - only use moves that deal 10 damage. The trick would be figuring out which secondary effects are the most useful!
I kinda went through this idea at one point, but there are so many options. I also had the idea to only use Pokémon under level 10 on the cards. Kinda similar.
@@Paraspectre Yo my dude pokemon TCG is on nintendo switch now!!!
Oh boy. An hour long? you really spoiled us with this one, didn't ya'? thanks for your hard work - I enjoy your unique, long, and entertaining content. Don't stop the way you work. Have a great day/week!
Base Set Pokemon is so nostalgic for me. I'll never forget pulling Base Set Blastoise and hosing every1 with it thanks to Rain Dance
Fun fact: Nidoran Male was even in some tournament decks. Many players took the coinflip for this fast brutal damage output.
I can see that. I’m still not a fan haha
They were a fan and they’d rock your world if they landed their coin flip. I heard the main champion that ran nidorun boy was … sugar… or something.
Says more about hindsight on card usefulness then what is actually good.
@@corralzin4909 Unfortunately that says more about it being a luck based strategy than it being actually good. I will admit it is one of the better gambles you can take in the base set for damage output to energy input ratio.
I appreciate any card that can win the game in one turn. You go first: energy, flip, 30 damage on a Rattata or Magikarp, opponent has no bench. Game over.
Would love some videos on the E-Reader sets. Skyridge, Aquapolis and Expedition are amongst my favourite sets ever. Such beautiful cards from amazing Pokémon
I just paid a whole car payment for a booster pack of aquapolis and expedition 🥴
I wanna see then talk about Vs
I stopped collecting the cards decades ago, but the eReader ones are some I would still be interested in getting just for the GBA mini games.
@@SamStarbuckerI just paid a whole pack of cards for a car payment. Funny how those things equal out sometimes. Yin and yang. Hot and cold. You're yes and you're no. Anyways namaste.
I’m getting back into Pokémon cards after years of collecting but never playing them. I’m finally starting to play the actual card game instead of just collecting them to throw in a binder and look at them like I did when I was younger. So happy I found this channel.
The reason Zapdos is the only legendary bird in the base set is because it was designed (mostly) around pokemon kids would would see the first half of red/blue. Zapdos was usually the first bird people would get because of the difficulty of the seafoam island articuno puzzle and moltres was endgame.
Is that true? Makes sense if it is. I just figured Zapdos was more popular than the other two
Either that or the developers wanted more pokémon representing the lightning type from the get go, as they were outnumbered by the other types.
Moltres was definitely the first legendary I encountered. It's right there on Victory Road. I didn't even realize the power plant existed my first game. I did try the Seafoam Islands the first time, but got lost and decided to journey back to Pallet Town and surf south instead (I totally missed fly my first time playing, too).
Articuno was first one found
This sounds like something made up because it “sounds good” but doesn’t have any evidence supporting it. I couldn’t find a quote from the creators saying anything like this
48:34
fun fact: attach a defender on magnemite, use selfdestruct
boom, it is still standing (or floating...?) on the stage
Man the Overgrow deck was it for me: the 100HP Base Set Gyarados, the 80HP Beedrill. What a time to be alive that was.
That was my first Pokémon deck, in that moment is when the journey started.
My dad drove me an hour from our house to a different STATE just so I could get the Overgrowth deck. No store in my hometown had any cards in stock for so long.
@@ParaspectreThat's an awesome Dad
Although you said you dont plan on going past Skyridge, I'd love to see you delve into the further generations such as the "ex Era," the "Diamond & Pearl/Platinum Era,"and the "HeartGold SoulSilver Era." The artworks for these slightly later sets (such as HGSS with the stunning multi-card "Legend" cards) along with how much of a reputation some of these cards have held over the years (such as gold stars and such) make them a good topic to talk about and something that IMO should not go unnoticed by retrospective channels like yours. I'll say that this comes from a bit of a bias as I work at a card shop and pretty much the only things we ever buy from people (because it is the only thing people ever bring in to sell to us) are either cards from the Base set - Team Rocket era or modern cards from the past 5 or so most recent sets (These cards also being the main topic on the internet lately). So it'd be very nice and refreshing to hear someone's take on them who has a big bias for the WoTC era cards aswell as it would also be really cool to see you go over the evolution of the mechanics of the Pokemon TCG along with the design of the cards! Please take my suggestion into consideration and thank you for reading!
18:00
a little clarify, charizard needs to discard 2 energy cards instead of 2 energy
which means if only 2 double colourless energy cards are attached to it when fire spin is used
all 2 energy cards, i.e. 4 energy, have to be discarded
Thankfully the reprinted Base Charizard from the TCG Classic Collection coming out later this year finally changed that to say "Discard 2 Energy."
Wether or not it should be legal for retro events is left for the community to decide I guess hahaha.
Stumbled on your chanel a couple weeks ago and im hooked!
I've never played pokemon competitively but speaking from my experience playing mtg I'd say you undervalued pokedex and maintenance heavily. In my world, we would call pokedex scry 5 which would be insane. The closest I can think of is ponder which only does 3 cards and is still banned in almost every format for being too powerful. Maintenance is good because the ability to dump useless cards in your hand and replace them is powerful. It's similar to a card in mtg called faithless looting which just got banned in modern. Imo it's even better though because the cards go back in your deck.
Dude, this was an absolute treat!
I feel like the Base Set doesn't get a full look outside the context of being alongside Jungle and Fossil.
As a side thing, I think Clefairy being a foil rare with no Clefable in sight is a leftover artifact of Clefairy potentially having the marketable mascot spot instead of Pikachu. If you think about it, it is a little weird that the series mascot is a pretty basic common card
Best 2 pokemon cards from the base sets in my opinion were Dugtrio and Blastoise. Dugtrio was very easy to bring out and it did a good amount of damage very quickly along with its pre-evolution Diglett. Blastoise was essential in any water deck as its pokemon power rain dance made water decks an easy choice to use.
Huh, I never noticed Gyradose was weak to grass in the TCG. That.... irks me so much. Why isn't it lightning?
Cannot overstate how perfect this video was. I would love to see set breakdowns of the early sets, it's really really interesting to see the balance breakdown and everything. Masterpiece. Keep it up!
Why thank you! I’m looking forward to researching the Jungle set
I loved your Vending Series. You should do one on the early Japanese Unnumbered Promos from 1996-2001!
To note: Devolution Spray's two main functions in competitive was to 1. Coming into play pokepower/bodies (if there were any at that time) and 2. to take off an evolution card so you can evolve to a fresh one, even if your pokemon is knocked out during the process. It's to save your 2nd stages ect, in case you couldn't search it out. It's not bad but it's very specific in it's use case.
They fixed the card later on with hyper devolution spray.
Yeah, I’ve never personally encountered a time where I wanted to use it in a deck
There were only pokepowers back then. Pokebodies only came some expansions later. Back then, pokepowers were not so common, since only a few cards had them.
Competitive and stage 2 are opposites
@@drmann15 you say that, but rain dance Blastoise and damage swap Alakazam were in the top tier decks in the beginning.
I can’t stress enough just how much this kind of content is my jam. Hope this remains an ongoing series for a while! I’ve really loved your shorter content so longer form videos like these are especially nice.
Wow, didn't expect to see such a long video ! Thank you so much !
I forgot the Electrode at 26:33 even existed because it's not included in the GBC game! Maybe the rainbow artwork was too hard to reduce to a palette of four colors for the GBC, but I'm guessing Buzzap was simply too much work for the programmers to want to bother coding in. 🤔
Many forget it existed for that very reason.
Too bad, because i would take that one over that crappy GB exclusive version they made. Skipped using voltorb and electrode in GB games because it was just too crappy.
As someone who's been playing with the vintage theme decks lately, it's been nice hearing someone elses opinion on these cards. Thanks for the videos. I've been binging these set throwbacks.
Been looking for a video like this ty and please continue this as a series.
lass was a killer, maybe more so after jungle, but you play all your oaks, bills, energy removals, etc. then you lass and the opponent doesn't get to use any of theirs
It’s still pretty situational. You’re playing other trainer cards to get more cards (Oak, Bill) so your chances are higher that you’re getting more trainers, causing you to wait on Lass even more. Also, Oak would cause you to discard your Lass, so you’d have to draw another. It’s good, but for it to really make an impact, everything needs to be right.
1:01:27 The plural is "all y'all."
Ugh you’re right
The Base Set, along with RBY and the anime, were the holy trinity of what got me into anime and video games. I can confidently say had I never got this set as a kid, I'd probably never have gotten into what I enjoy today.
Mr Paraspectre here acting like it’s Christmas gifting us a whole hour of content!?!? Absolute bliss. Love these analyses, and will look forward to the future sets.
I too have a stronger connection with the older cards, compared to the newer sets. Up to the gen2, and the e-reader ones, I was an avid collector. But then switched to other games as I grew older…
My first pack had Venusaur, and I remember pulling the Pokémon Center trainer card and being absolutely impressed by the CGI art of Keiji Kinebuchi. Still my favorite illustrator.
I never actually got any Gen 2 or e reader ones. Which is weird, because my friends and I were SO into Gen 2
Thank you for covering this content! The original Base Set holds a very special place to so many out there. The 90's shounen aesthetic is just so different from the branding that Pokemon has nowadays... Look forward to you covering the other gen 1 expansions.
That was a nice watch. I never got big into the physical TCG on account of it being rather expensive, but I did get hooked on the digital version with the GBC game releasing on 3DS. In the couse of this video, I fired it up again and built the Haymaker deck mentioned in this video. I didn't know that was a thing, but it really is incredibly effective.
Hard to beat those fast, quick attackers
For sure. It also uses WAY less energy cards than I'm used to and it's my first multicolor Pokemon deck. It's a fascinating learning experience.
Your channel made me start using parasect in every pokemon games. Has access to spore and false swipe. Never bothered checking before! On another note, the japan exclusive 2nd pokemon TCG game is pretty good. Surprised to see there was a fan translation.
He's done challenge videos for the sequel, too. Browse around. I'm sure you'll come across them.
I’m loving watching this with the Banjo Kazooie song in the background. Pokemon with that song really takess me back
Childhood rocked with the Base Set and the state of the game seemed amazing when WOTC sets were out. Makes me wanna play the rom with PTCG. I started playing MTG after ending collecting Pokémon in EX Delta Species, few sets before the ugly powercreep.
52:30 Never understimate the power of a Turn 1 Lass. Did a retro match a couple of weeks back and getting Lass'd Turn 1 cost me the game since I had to shuffle back Trader and Computer Search hahaha.
I wanted a video to put in the background while I clean and this pops up, noice
Blastoise is literally one of the best cards ever, for its release time. So yeah…. It’s pretty clearly the best water type in base set.
Great job! I enjoyed it as someone who has a long history with card games and is already knowledgeable on much about Base Set Pokemon.
My guy online and Card Pop work in the Switch Version of Pokémon TCG for GBC.
but when the world need Paraspectre most
he vanished…
Set analysis is a great topic to go into! Your channel recently inspired me to upload some Pokémon TCG GB challenge runs of my own, and doing those have made me think about distribution. Is Machop balanced against Hitmonchan because it evolves? How about being Common vs Rare--should the rarity of the card reflect power or be reflective of the evolutionary stage?
I'm still at the start of the video, but you mention the relative balance of types in this set. When you get to Fossil and Jungle, you may notice a deluge of Grass types and an imbalance towards attacks that Poison compared to other status conditions. You mention Water is a common Gen 1 type, but Poison is not far behind, and even some Tangela cards inflict poison.
great video buddy. super energy removal is op af.
You cannot convince me that bill should not be a 4 of in every single deck. It’s just too good for consistency boosting
43:25 I've done some research like this, played the GBC TCG game, found old decklists and remixed my own, it would be neat to battle. I printed out all the original cards up through Gym Challenge, got some real energy cards to use as support and then sleeved them all, you can't tell they are proxys really. Do you have a link cable long enough to reach Missouri? haha
4:04 Well.
Poison type in Kanto beats out Water type in Kanto by 1.
33 > 32.
Very true, I just went to Water by default. Plus it’s an actual card type
I'm so happy you're doing this series. Would love to see like 1 super-quick example of a Meta game at the time of the sets. But I love this either way
Please do as many of these as you can, for as many sets as you can. This was great to watch!
Man this is making wanna play the gbc tcg now aha. I only collected the cards and I'm a veteran in the main games, but I never actually played the tcg (or learned), but as you're going over these moves, I'm feeling nostalgia for these cards again and I wanna learn how to actually play with them. Great video!
I don't even play Pokemon TCG, I only play Yugioh but I love your content. It is so easy to understand even for someone with no idea of what's good or not in this game.
I also find it funny how you mention powercreep in Pokemon because I honestly had no idea the game suffered from that as well (I am very used to it due to how ridiculous ygo's powercreep is). It's an interesting way to look at how card games change so much through the years.
All card games suffer from it sadly. I used to love yugioh but now I can't play the current formats. Same for pokemon, luckily there's a fanbase playing the older formats of the games (yugioh and pokémon tcg)
Great video! I'm currently trying to recollect the Base Set (and Jungle/Fossil) cards from my childhood and at the same time introducing my son to pokemon cards. This video was great at showing him what these cards were like back then vs. now. I hope you can get your Zard soon! I'm just missing the 3 starters and a few random non holos...
Fantastic, I hope you have some decent card stores near you. I like going after work and just browsing commons boxes for an hour ☺️
@Paraspectre we have a few decent shops... I'm at the point in my collection now where I'm having to look online for cards I'm missing. I've been to a few card shows too. Those are a lot of fun
I remember reading about a deck build that was purely a stall. No energy and all high hp Pokémon. Used the Pokémon center card to keep health and you used the imposter oak card when the opponent was low on cards in their hand to make them use more cards from their deck. It was weird but fun to use.
Ah yes the amazing Dewgong holding on high above the rest of the water uncommons. What a sick evolutionary line in the base set, that 60 HP on Seel is no joke either.
I remember getting the Overgrowth deck, my sister got Brushfire as I remember she always had that Ninetales kicking around in our battles. I remember being a big fan of Staryu and Starmie in that structure deck, solid stuff and I liked them from the Gameboy game too especially because of Starmie's Star Freeze sound effects.
I’ll take Overgrowth over Brushfire any day 😎
Thank you for this nice video! I enjoyed it a lot! I'm exited for the next videos about retro decks!
retro pokemon for life!
I was so excited when I got ZAP! So nostalgic for me. Funny how tha pikachu on the cover ended up being the pikachu used for the movie promo card.
Man I loved this, and it brought back a lot of great memories. Please do a video like this on Jungle and Fossil!
I fully intend to do this 😊
Really fun video! When I play the GBC TCG, I enjoy using a variant of Haymaker called Flamemaker. Swaps out Hitmonchan for Fossil Magmar. Much more consistent since there's no Fire resists. Magmar plays the game a _little_ slower than Hitmonchan, but both of its moves have status effects which are nice early in a match to help you get benched Scyther and Electabuzz set up.
Ah interesting. Yeah, that’s a pretty big drawback for Hitmonchan. Jab is useless against resisting ones.
3:03 actually now that I think about it, aren't most flying types also normal in the first generation? You also say that instead of the flying, they focused on the normal part, hence why they are colorless
Seeing this is fun! My parents and I used to go nuts with collecting the more classic WotC/2000s Nintendo cards, so it always makes me warm and fuzzy seeing coverage on the Base Set and past expansions.
My white whale when it comes to the Pokémon TCG is, "What if all the types were supposed to stay like they are in the video games?" More complicated, yes. Janky sounding, very yes. But I think it would be a neat little alternate universe for the TCG!
Squirtle will always have a place in my heart for somehow paralyzing the opposing Pokemon like 11 times in a row and shutting down their deck that otherwise hardcountered mine. I really did figure out how to perfectly roll a die for just that one battle
Really fun trip down memory lane. If we are counting trainers I'd say the best card is Bill. Really no reason to ever run less than 4 copies. I'm curious why you'd say each deck should run at least 2 copies and not four?
This is such a wonderful channel, your passion shines through every video you make!
I had a couple of different nonstandard decks for tournaments back in the day but one of my favorite niche decks was always my fire/colorless deck build around Charizard. Everyone always slept on it's pokemon power and pokemon breeder so you could get an unsuspecting charmander on the field with 2 fire energy and then surprise the opponent by dropping a pokemon breeder and colorless energy on it in the same turn to go from some wimpy basic to the absolute buster that was fire spin Charizard and keep utilizing colorless energies to only discard a single card per fire spin allowing you to use it back to back with lucky enough draws. The advantage of the rest of the deck being colorless is you could always stall for time with something like Chancey or use one of the no retreat colorless to quickly swap into charmander once the setup was complete.
Yeah, that’s a sweet strategy, going from Charmander’s Ember to Fire Spin in one turn. Charizard is strong as heck, but it never really worked for me.
Love that you included the theme decks, hope this trend continues in the series.
By the way if you're curious the reason the best of game promos reverse Holo Hitmonchan had 60hp Instead of 70 was That one of the guys that Wizards absolutely hated Haymaker decks. And then either losing the license so they figured for a little while anyway they can print it wrong and tell people to play it as written
I did not know this!
@@Paraspectre fwiw he probably didn't know Hitmonchan ex was coming
God I wonder if I can find it still. There's a very funny story about the shadowless cards. Apparently shortly before they were slated to release someone lost the files for the templates they were using and they only had a little bit to go off of because apparently Japan just wasn't getting back with them. So so they took what they had which were cropped versions of the cards which lacked text and they flipped him and rotated them and forgot to add the drop shadow. You look really closely on shadowless card you can tell that the background is repeating from the top. Worth noting that if a card is first edition it will also be shadowless aside from Machamp which I'm sure you'll touch on by the time you get to it. Effectively this makes the shadowless cards 2nd edition
Chansey was a tank mon you'd play to stall your opponent while you setup bench mons and use trainers to fish for evolutions and energies. It was also the best anti-psychic wall in the game. You never attack with it because it helps the opponent more than hurts them, or at best you'd occasionally use Scrunch to guard against high damage attacks or fighter counterplay.
THIS. I was shocked he chose dragonair as best rare colorless Pokémon. 😬
18:54 strategy, use poisonpowder then spam bind, with good look you will win easily
Ugh the Banjo Kazooie music is what sold me. Awesome video! Subbed fo sho~
Devolution spray is a better full heal for basic or stage 1 pokemon, since you can choose stage 2 and discard no cards in order to heal it of major status effects and minor status effects like poliwhirl's amnesia.
It’s still maybe good, some of the time. Maybe. ☺️
Iirc, I think Chancy is actually part of the best deck in the original format, but you not knowing that is entirely reasonable because unlike the main games, the TCG came out with new sets fast enough that the Meta couldn't settle like it did in the games.
I did wanna mention it, though, since Chancy is just in general one of the strongest gen 1 pokemon in every version of gen 1, entirely by accident, and I think that's funny.
Scoop Up is the one card I think you were off base with. The fact that you can just play the basic 'mon that you just scooped up again basically means it's a free heal.
I didn't know how to play the card game when I was a kid. I recently started playing the Gameboy TCG games to learn. This video helped me put things into perspective (or should I say into paraspective). I've got some deck building to do in game now.
These cards are so old now, it’s nice to see that I can still help people to want to play ☺️
@@Paraspectre lol I feel how old they are, they came out when I was 10 years old 😅
I love watching these videos as I organize my collection
Y'know, i wish they'd just keep printing the Wizards of the Coast sets. There's literally no downside for anyone involved. Everyone wants them and it'd be printing money for WotC and Nintendo to do packs, theme decks, etc even at the same prices we bought them for back in the day without adjusting for inflation. (Well, everyone except for the losers trying to sell holo Charizards for $150 but nobody cares about those jerks anyways)
Ohhh i love the banjo kazooie click clock wood summer version
On the background! Actually i love all the banjo kazooie soundtrack😭💙
In the game boy version, I built a strangler deck around Poliwrath, Golduck, and Dragonair that could routinely remove energy faster than it could be played. Very fun build around if you aren't playing humans. Blastoise ended up utility as I rarely attacked with it
This sent me on a hunt to find my old cards. Great vid.
This is a nostalgia trip down memory lane for me. When I turned 5 (in 2004) my half sister had a HUGE collection of these. To this day, I’m still trying to 1 up her childhood collection 😅
Nice. I liked hearing your options as someone that actually learned the game as a kid.
They may not all be right, but they are from my experiences 😊
Ah, the nostalgia! While I was never able to build a full collection when the first sets came out. Mainly due to the whole Pokémon is Satan thing going on. I do remember the collection I did have, and they were awesome to play with, when my older sis had the time. Learning about this stuff now, is really cool to see. After you posted your first challenge vid, I got that craving to play the old game, and collected what cards I lacked. Been playing against my Brother-in Law and my niece and Nephews. It's been a real blast. Thanks for making these videos dude! :3
When I was 8 before had a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had to go watch my sister play a game of tee ball. In order to placate me, my dad took me to a local baseball card store (D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue) and bought me two packs of Pokemon cards. In the second one was a holographic Charizard. That was the single greatest moment of my young life, and I'm pretty sure it's still up there in my top 5 almost 25 years later. I'm incredibly excited to get myself that Pokemon Legacy set or whatever they're calling it when they finally release it just for the pure and unadulterated nostalgia :D
I've been recently getting back into the modern TCG online and I think Blastoise here is a great example of how wildly the power level has changed from back in the day to now. Back then, Blastoise would've been the centerpiece of a water deck, with high health, a powerful ability, and an attack that can deal up to 60 damage.
But now? 100 health won't save you from most basic attacks from current centerpiece Pokemon, and the thought of needing 5 total energy to deal 20 extra damage is so laughably bad that you'd lose a match before you could even get Blastoise to attack. The current go-to water deck with Chien-Pao can deal 300 damage by discarding 5 water energy, and they don't even all need to be on Chien-Pao!
I know card games can't just tread water forever and it's been over 20 years since Pokemon TCG started, but dang, it's just always wild to see how different things get lmao
EDIT: also, always appreciate some of that good Banjo music
It does suck to see a lot of these old cards become obsolete now, but that’s why I focus on them instead of modern cards 😎
Yes please
I love this format of going through all cards. The nostalgia and seeing what is iniside the set. And just fair i like this format
Great video! Can't wait for Jungle and Fossil!
29:59 The AI always skipped their turn against me whenever I use Destiny Bond. Which always made me question what was the point of the card.
...random idea to milk the TCG video game: maybe play through the game using one of the TCG decks? I'm sure you wouldn't mind playing through it using the Overgrow deck, yeah?
Loving your content man! Thanks for this and all your hard work. Will you be reviewing Fire Red & Leaf Green at some point? Would love to hear your thoughts.
When I feel motivated, I’ll return to the Paraspective ☺️ I’ve actually never beaten FR/LG before.
That intro alone earned a like. If I was not already subscribed then I’d hit that bell
You under value lass a lot. The early meta had people running lots of draw snd energy removal. Lass was considered strong because you could simply activate as many trainer cards as you desired, getting as much benefit as possible and then use lass, cutting your opponent off from any of their powerful trainer cards
I simply must ask you to talk about the delta series. It was probablt tye first set i got that wasnt a hand me down, though those cards were still greatly appreciated.
So the haymaker deck was mostly Electabuzz and Hitmonchan until Scyther came in the jungle set then everyone played all three but the original haymaker deck were just the two pokémon from base set
Im so Happy I was able to buy a conplete base set for my collection. Very lovely and nostalgic set, definitely worth the price!
This is the exact video I needed to get back into Pokémon! Thank you!
btw one strategy that i invented is to use alakazam alongside dodrio and mr mime in the same deck, with alakazams poke power you can intentionally swap all your damage counters onto dodrio to get a huge rage off, also its poke power works really well with mr mime which lets you retreat it for free if the matchup is bad/the enemy pokemon resists psychic (thats basically the only time the matchup will be bad) and either way as long as you have alakazam plus mr mime you will only take 20 damage at best each turn and it will survive for a very long time since you can just swap the damage counters arround to your dodrios in the back to power up rage and saving mr mime at the same time. these 3 have amazing synergy.
Pokemon tcg for game just dropped for switch online and it has multiplayer
The themed music for each type was a nicle little touch
Do you actually have these data somewhere on a spreadsheet? would like to see/use it for my own if its possible.
Yas more TCG content!
1:00 "this is a retro channel, baybe." One of the fastest subscribe and like I've ever reacted.